


Potholes on Memory Lane

by molegria



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, Post-Frozen (2013), Romance, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 10:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13211556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molegria/pseuds/molegria
Summary: Anna suffered a head injury and forgot all that happened since arguing with Elsa at the coronation ball. Now she finds herself in the middle of a tug of war between her sister and a tall, fair stranger about how fast she should get those memories back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kaleidoscope](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/347727) by Duchess Sophie von Teschen. 



> This fic was inspired by Duchess Sophie von Teschen's story Kaleidoscope, with whom it shares the memory loss trope, the Kristanna shipping, and the fact that Hans is an irredeemable slimebag.

Anna dipped back into consciousness, her head throbbing with the mother of all migraines. Light seeped through her eyelids; she opened her eyes slowly, upper lashes sticking to the lower row. Somewhere to her left, the hushed voices of Elsa and an older man seemed to float far away, as if coming from another lifetime.

 

She tried to assess her current situation. She was lying on her bed, wrapped in warm blankets and with an excessive number of pillows on her back. This was her bedroom, of that she was sure, and yet certain things seemed off — there were clothes on hangers and trinkets on shelves that she didn't remember owning, and her furniture was in odd places, like someone had moved her things around in her sleep.

 

Oh, and there was a stranger sitting by her feet. That wasn't helping much.

 

She let out a grunt. (She would have screamed, but her throat was dry and her head hurt too much.) The unknown man ran a tired hand through his messy blonde mop and looked up at her.

 

"... Anna?" He whispered, brown eyes as big as saucers and filled with unabashed concern, then held her hand.

 

Ok. This was. Awkward.

 

"Anna!" It was Elsa now, rushing to sit by her side (the other side, opposite Creepy Blonde). The man she had been talking to, Anna could see now, was the royal doctor. "Thank God you are awake. We were all so worried!"

 

Well, so her sister didn't hate her. Elsa's anger must have melted away after whatever had happened to her, Anna thought. Because something had definitely happened to her, as evidenced by the presence of the doctor and the way her whole body seemed to be in varying levels of pain.

 

"Wh—", she started. Her plan was to ask "what happened", but halfway through the first syllable her throat prompted her to change it to: "Water?"

 

"I'll get it," said Blondie, letting go of her hand and standing up. Whoa, the guy was  _tall_. Seriously, whoever that dude was, he must have eaten all his greens as a kid. She was still creeped out by him holding her hand out of nowhere (also:  _big_  hands), but she had to admit she was a little bit in awe.

 

While the big blond stranger filled a cup of water for her at the other end of the room, the doctor started to run a series of health check-ups on her. He picked up her hand (what was it with everyone wanting a piece of her left hand today?) and pressed two fingers to her wrist, counting her pulse with the aid of a pocket watch.

 

“How are you feeling?,” asked Elsa. Her sister looked...  _different_. For starters, she was wearing her hair in a thick long braid that fell over her shoulder; Anna couldn't remember the last time she had seen Elsa with her hair down. Her eyes were different too, or rather the way she was looking at her with so much raw emotion pouring out of them. And there were Elsa's naked hands, her long fingers and carefully manicured nails — where were her gloves? Elsa always wore gloves. Even at her coronation Elsa took out her gloves for a grand total of 28 seconds as she was proclaimed queen, and then immediately put them on again.

 

Anna tried to reach for Elsa's hand with her own free one, but then realized her right arm was immobilized by a sling.

 

"Weird," she whispered as the doctor pulled up one eyelid, then the other to check her pupils.

 

Blondie came back with the water, which he handed to Elsa (rather than trying to make her drink it, for which Anna was glad). She pulled herself up against the pillows with some difficulty, aided by the doctor, then drank the whole cup in one gulp.

 

"How long have I been out?," she managed to say.

 

"A whole day," Elsa answered, sharing a look with Blondie. "And a few more hours since you fell. It was around this time when you brought her in yesterday, wasn't it?" Blondie nodded. The doctor had pulled up the end of her blankets and was prickling her toes with a pin, exposing her bare feet to the cold air. Why was it so cold? "We were terrified. You hurt your head pretty badly, and Doctor Nilsen could not check the full extent of the damages until you woke up."

 

That explained why her head seemed about to explode, and why it was wrapped in bandages. But it didn't explain why her room felt strange, nor why Elsa was not wearing gloves, nor why there was a very tall male stranger standing in her private chambers as if he were part of her direct family. Nor did it explain the landscape she was seeing through her window behind the man, now that she had sat up.

 

Elsa noticed her extended silence. "Anna? Are you ok?"

 

"Why is it snowing?"

 

The other three turned to the window, seeming to have only noticed the white-coated tree tops and the snowflakes gathering on her windowsill now that she had mentioned it.

 

"It's been snowing on and off since Wednesday," said the doctor matter-of-factly. "It's a common occurrence in mid-November."

 

Wait,  _what_?

 

"It's mid—" The words died in Anna's mouth before they could fill a whole sentence. Mid-November.  _November_. This was... this was impossible. Well, it  _did_  explain why everything felt so strange, but this couldn't be happening to her. She felt herself starting to hyperventilate. "Can I speak to my sister in private, please?"

 

They all exchanged looks while Anna's heart grew increasingly heavier and her brain grew increasingly painfuller. Finally, Elsa got up, ushered the two men out of the room and closed the door. She was back by Anna's side in a blink.

 

"Anna, what's wrong? You look pale."

 

"The calendar, that's what is wrong," Anna whispered. "When did November get here?"

 

"Right after October, as it's prone to doing," said Elsa, even as realization started to dawn on her.

 

"Yes, and after September, and August and July. Where did all those months go?"

 

"Anna," Elsa whispered in a low voice, holding Anna's left hand. Her hands were colder than Anna had anticipated. "What is the last thing you remember?"

 

Anna breathed in and let out a deep, hard sigh. Her brain felt like scrambled eggs — burnt scrambled eggs with too much black pepper and salt — but she made an effort, seeking the last strand of coherent memory in her mind. She clearly remembered the beginning of summer: her eighteenth birthday, the warm days of late June, all the preparations and expectations surrounding Elsa's ascent to the throne. She could never forget the first of July, of course, with the opening of the gates and all the ships arriving at the port; and then Elsa's coronation (she still wore gloves and updos back then), and then there was the ball and they laughed about chocolate but then they had an argument about...

 

"Where's Hans?"

 

Elsa blinked. "Huh?"

 

"The coronation ball," Anna explained. "We had an argument. You and I. When I told you about my engagement to Hans." She looked at her sister and tried to gauge her reaction. Elsa seemed completely dumbstruck. Not very surprisingly, since Anna was retelling things that had happened in July and apparently they were in  _mid-November_  or something. "You... forbade me to marry him. Which, let's not go into that right now, but, rude. And..." She struggled. Thoughts started to get muddled from that point on. "There was some... shouting, mainly from me, I suppose, and then... there was..."

 

And then there was a wall in the middle of her memories — a translucent wall of thick ice, through which everything was distorted shapes and underwater noise.

 

"Your last memory is the coronation ball," breathed Elsa.

 

The room had turned a lot colder for some reason.

 

"Where's Hans?," Anna repeated. Even if Elsa had been against their wedding, he should have stuck around, shouldn't he? Maybe not for five months, she reasoned with herself, it wouldn't make sense for him to just idle away in Arendelle trying to court her against the Queen's wishes. Still, he loved her. He should be informed of her health. "Does he know I hurt my head? He'll probably be worried as well. Elsa?"

 

Her sister had stood up in a swift motion, a hand over her mouth, shaking her head. She seemed on the verge of tears. "I'll... I'll be right back," she said, dashing out of the room.

 

"Maybe it will fix my memories if I sleep and wake up again?," Anna shouted, but she was already outside pulling the doctor away by the arm. Her head was a mess, taken by a migraine so severe she thought she might vomit; falling into a very deep sleep sounded like a great idea, memories or not. The last thing she saw was the tall blond man standing by her door, watching her with panic in his eyes, and then she blacked out.


	2. Chapter 2

Sleeping and waking up again did not bring Anna's memories back on the first night, nor on the second, nor on the eighth. It did, however, do wonders for most of her other ailments: her bruises were a faint yellow shade, the scabs on her leg wound were all but gone, and her sprained right arm was almost good again. She still had violent migraines whenever she tried too hard to remember anything, and so she had been avoiding further efforts in that direction — something Elsa seemed to approve wholeheartedly.

 

It hadn't snowed that morning, but the world remained covered in the white blanket of the previous days. It was infuriating to think that most of summer and autumn had simply vanished from Anna's mind, but there was a particular strangeness to watching the approach of winter again when her most recent memories were actually closer to late spring.

 

"Weird," she whispered, her warm breath condensing on the bedroom window.

 

"You've been saying that a lot this week," chuckled Elsa from the other side of the room. She lifted her hands, showing a tablespoon and the bottle of medicine. She had taken to wearing gloves again.

 

"How much longer do I have to take it? That thing tastes like sewage."

 

"Doctor Nilsen said a fortnight, so we're just past the middle mark," said Elsa. "And how would you know the taste of sewage?"

 

Anna wrinkled her nose and shrugged. "Maybe I drank sewage water at some point during the last five months. If you'd tell me anything relevant about that time, I might remember."

 

Mentioning how uncooperative Elsa was about the whole memory loss thing always turned her sourer than Doctor Nilsen's medicine, Anna had noticed. (It didn't stop her from mentioning it, though.) "We have talked about this. You must not overexert your mind. Doctor's orders."

 

Elsa held out the remedy-filled spoon in front of her face. Anna took it begrudgingly, swallowing the bitter oil with a disgusted shiver. "Six more days of this misery," she grumbled.

 

"This misery got you out of bed," said Elsa, poking her on the hip.

 

"It didn't get me very far from it," Anna huffed, directing her gaze to the castle's snow-covered courtyard again. "You say I have spent all the warm season on the other side of these gates. Now winter is knocking at our doors and I'm back to house arrest. Worse, I can't even set foot outside my room."

 

"Don't call it 'house arrest'," Elsa sighed. "You're frustrated, I know. But you're almost back to perfect health, and I'm sure your memories will come back. Gradually." She smiled sadly. "I have promised we were never closing the gates again, and I haven't changed my mind."

 

"That's reassuring," Anna conceded. "But as soon as I'm done taking that yucky thing, we are both going outside and we're having a snowball fight until our faces grow numb," she added, making Elsa laugh.

 

They watched the scene outside Anna's window together for a moment, produce carts and castle servants hurrying back and forth along the bridge like figures trapped inside a giant snow globe. "You have always liked this time of the year," Elsa said softly.

 

"We both did, back in the day. Before... well. Before." She still didn't know why her sister had spent the last 13 years locked in her room. This was one of the many subjects Elsa shied away from. "I remember every year, on the first heavy snow, I'd go outside and build a snowman under your window to see if it would coach you out of hiding," she reminisced. "I always tried to make it look like Olaf, the one you made that one time. Do you remember?"

 

Elsa turned her back to Anna, tightening the lid on the medicine bottle. "How could I forget?" Her displeased mumble sounded out of place.

 

"It's just weird," continued Anna. "I know my mind is skipping almost half a year, so the concept of time is a jumble in my head, but watching the kingdom covered in snow feels so... recent. Not last winter or last spring, those are crystal clear in my mind. It's as if..." She sighed, speaking mostly to herself. "As if one of the memories I've lost involved winter, somehow."

 

Elsa had laid the remedy and the spoon on Anna's vanity and stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself and wringing her gloved hands. "Maybe you are recovering your memories starting with the most recent ones?," she suggested in a high-pitched voice. "You did hurt yourself slipping on ice."

 

Oh, yes, Anna was pretty sure that one was a lie. First, because unless she had slipped on ice and then fallen from a rooftop, it didn't explain having a sprained arm, a scraped leg, a giant bump on her forehead and bruises pretty much all over. Second, because Elsa was unable to provide many details of the incident — her story was that Anna had left the castle to go to the town markets for some diplomacy and light shopping, slipped on an icy paving stone, and was brought back to the castle already unconscious. Too simple; too many plot holes. Third, because her memory post-accident was perfectly sharp, and Elsa herself had said "a few more hours since you fell." If she had fallen so near the castle, why would it have taken her "a few hours" to be brought back?

 

"Yeah, that's probably it," Anna answered, knowing it was useless to argue with Elsa about any of that. "I slipped on ice, and Christoffer found me."

 

"Kristoff."

 

"Kristoff," she corrected herself. "He seemed really hurt that I didn't remember him."

 

Elsa cleaned her throat. This was another subject she liked to dodge. "Well, it must have been painful for him. Like I told you, he's a friend of yours, and very fond of you."

 

"You'd think he'd step by to see how I'm doing, you know, if he's so fond of me," Anna scoffed. Not that she cared, of course. After all, even if Elsa swore they were close friends, for her this Kristoff fellow was still absolutely unknown. Maybe if he _had_  showed up at some point during the last week, she might have been able to become acquainted with him again, but the man had vanished into thin air like her memories since that first day.

 

"Kristoff is a busy man," started Elsa, "he had to—"

 

"Supervise the ice harvesting in the north, I know," completed Anna. "This is another thing that makes me wonder. How does the second in line to the throne of Arendelle become buddies with an ice harvester?"

 

"That one is easy to answer," said Elsa, approaching her again with a smile. "You always make friends with everyone you meet."

 

"Doesn't explain how I met him," she countered, rubbing the bump on her head with her good hand. Just talking about all this was making her migraine come back.

 

Elsa rolled her eyes then kissed Anna's forehead, carefully avoiding the bump. "You will remember it eventually. Everything. Don't force it."

 

" _Eventually_ ," Anna grumbled, frustrated. As far as she knew, if she counted only on Elsa's help, those five months would remain a mystery for the rest of her life.


	3. Chapter 3

On the sixteenth night since waking up after the accident, Anna had a vision in a dream. It was not a memory, since it all happened on a winter landscape, but it might very well have been a premonition — a terrifying one. She was on a sleigh being pulled through the woods at top speed by a reindeer; Kristoff, the stranger that supposedly was her friend, was with her, and they were arguing; there were howls and barks coming at them from the dark, and then something caught fire, and the sleigh fell down a cliff. They walked among snowy mountains until they reached a beautiful palace made entirely out of ice (this part was probably courtesy of Anna's imagination). Elsa was hiding there, and Anna tried to make her sister leave that place, but she wouldn't budge. And then a wall of ice erupted between them, surrounding Anna, closing in on her...

 

Anna woke up with a startle, heart racing and hands trembling. She inhaled and exhaled until her breathing stabilized, then looked around her room. Gerda slept soundly on the _récamier_ to her left. Anna had protested against her sleeping there; it would be bad for the governess's neck, she argued, and Anna's health issues didn't require constant vigilance like this. Now she understood. Gerda had been stationed there in case a nightmare just like the one she'd just had triggered her memories back.

 

Stepping out of bed very quietly, Anna collected from an armchair the winter clothes she'd worn the day before, when playing with Elsa outside. She needed to walk the nightmare off of her, until her nerves calmed down. Hopefully it would happen while she was still within the thick stone walls of the castle, but she didn't bet on it.

 

The darkness outside would still last for several hours. It was very early in the morning, early even for the servants. Anna was glad for that — she didn't feel like talking to anyone after her ominous dream.

 

Anyone, that is, except for the figure she saw through a window, crossing the castle yards towards the ice house with a lantern on his hand.

 

She rushed downstairs as silently as her excitement allowed, throwing on her heavy coat and stepping into her boots before opening the doors to the back yard and braving the freezing November air. She wrapped the coat tighter, crunching gravel and snow under her feet.

 

Kristoff was sitting with his back to her, sewing shut a long canvas sack filled with sawdust. The lantern he'd been carrying was hanging on the front of the sleigh where he was sitting, and an enormous reindeer stood next to him, eating a carrot from the ground.

 

A shiver ran down Anna's spine.

 

Once he was within hearing range, she cleaned her throat. He looked up from his task and turned back towards the sound, startled to see who it was.

 

"Hi." She smiled and waved at him briefly, then hid her naked hand back in the warmth of her coat. Noticing his grin was starting to get a bit too wide, she added, "I still don't remember you. Sorry."

 

Kristoff deflated so fast she actually felt heartbroken for him. He nodded and turned back to the sawdust bag. "Feeling better, at least? I mean, the bruises and all."

 

"Peachy. My head still feels like it's going to explode whenever I think too hard, but otherwise I'm good." She walked around the sleigh to have a closer look at the work on his lap. "What are you doing?"

 

"Maintenance," he answered while closing the final stitch with a knot. "It's cold enough to keep the doors open, and the place is not getting packed with ice yet. So we check the drains, add more straw, and fix the insulation, which is what these are for," he patted the sack. "What about you? What could possibly get you out of bed before 10 o'clock?"

 

Things that were creepy about Kristoff: he knew at what time she usually woke up, while she knew next to nothing about him. "Nightmare," she said simply, shaking her head.

 

The reindeer had been eyeing her cautiously so far. She extended a hand to it, and the animal approached her and nuzzled her face. "I think it likes me," she giggled, hiding her hands on the thick fur of the reindeer's neck.

 

Kristoff groaned, pushing the sawdust sack out of his lap and standing up. "Sven adores you when he's not bucking you off against a cliff side—"

 

Anna turned to Kristoff, expecting him to continue, but he was staring at the carrot remains on the ground. She turned back to the reindeer, Sven; it looked at her apologetically, or at least as apologetically as a reindeer could look at someone. It was a tall, muscular animal, perhaps not the largest reindeer she had even seen but definitely larger than she'd ever deemed herself brave enough to ride. Being thrown off its back was a much more plausible explanation for her wounds.

 

"Makes more sense than slipping on ice," she murmured, scratching Sven's neck.

 

"Huh?" Kristoff looked up.

 

"My sister said I got hurt slipping on icy pavement," Anna grumbled. "As if telling me 'you fell off a reindeer' would cause me to have an aneurysm."

 

"Who knows," he said, throwing the heavy sack over his shoulder. "Maybe she was afraid you might ask where you were going."

 

She looked at him again. He was smirking this time. "Where was I going?"

 

"Can't tell you."

 

Anna stomped after him towards the entrance of the ice house, arms crossed in front of her body. "You're just as bad as her, you know? Trying to protect me from my own mysterious past."

 

He put the sack down on a dry patch of floor and leaned it against the door frame. "The doctor said people sometimes repress bad memories after head trauma. Their brain erases them to avoid the pain," he justified then added with a sigh, still turned to the door, "Maybe you're just... better off without those memories, after all."

 

"Then why do I remember my parents' deaths?" Her words made him turn back to her. "Couldn't it have gone back further? Erase that too?" Her voice got caught on the back of her throat, but she blinked, took a deep breath and recomposed herself. "What memory could possibly be worse than that?"

 

Even in the dark of the morning it was visible that he had an answer for that question. He shuffled on his feet, hands on hips, shoulders tensed, jaw set. Finally, he stepped closer and looked around, ensuring there was nobody else but the two of them and Sven. "If I show you something, do you promise not to scream?," he whispered in a serious tone.

 

Anna's eyes traveled up and down his figure, suddenly aware that she was wearing only her nightgown under her winter coat. "Depends on the something."

 

Kristoff rolled his eyes. "It's nothing inappropriate."

 

"Then why would I scream?"

 

"Because it's something..." He clicked his tongue, searching for the right word. "Extraordinary."

 

Anna raised her eyebrows and whistled. "Fine. Where is that extraordinary something?"

 

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, at the door of the ice house standing ajar behind him.

 

"In there?"

 

He nodded. "Downstairs."

 

Anna looked at the door, then back at him. He towered over her, the light from the lantern that hung on the sleigh casting shadows on his face. The sawdust sack behind him, folded in the middle, reminded her of a human body bending from the waist.

 

"You, technically a stranger, want me to enter a windowless underground building containing only ice blocks and straw, with one very heavy door that locks from the outside, so you can show me something 'extraordinary' that might make me scream."

 

He puckered his lips and swayed his head from one side to the other, looking up. "There might be animal carcasses in there too."

 

She narrowed her eyes. "You're not helping your case."

 

Kristoff crossed his arms. "I'd be better off not risking you having an aneurysm."

 

So this was a test of faith, Anna thought. Either he wanted to see how committed she was to retrieving her memories, or he wanted to see if she trusted him. Probably both. The thing was, did she? She wanted to get her memories back, even if her stomach was doing somersaults at the mere prospect of seeing this "extraordinary" whatever. But she knew virtually nothing about this man. Elsa and Gerda may have said she could trust him, but could she really? She had no recollection of facts on which to base her decision, only her instincts — and her instincts were whispering for her to go into the ice house with him.

 

"Lead the way," she answered at last, jerking her head towards the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure the Bjorgman's family jewels are also extraordinary, but this fic is going to remain PG-rated.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never seen an ice house, mind you. I just read several descriptions from all over the web and ran wild with them. Also, this fic is not meant to fit the timeline of the short films, but I couldn't resist making a reference to Olaf's Frozen Adventure when the opportunity came by.

By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, Anna had regretted her decision — or at least her wardrobe choices. The air was colder and drier there than outside; once they crossed the third and last set of doors, the only thing keeping her from bailing out was sheer stubbornness.

 

The ice house had thick walls comprised of several layers of different materials, including sawdust sacks like the one Kristoff had been mending upstairs. The part that stood above ground was a small hallway containing just a lamp and the beginning of a spiral staircase made of stone. Downstairs, the second and third chambers had wooden shelves for storing food items. The more perishable goods were kept farther from the entrance. Luckily for her, there were no carcasses, only a few meat cuts in buckets and some wheels of hard-cured cheese.

 

The last room was the ice house proper, where the large slabs of ice were stored. Since autumn was close to an end, the place was rather empty, with towers and tables of ice blocks forming a vague maze around the room. The blocks and the floor were covered by a layer of straw to prevent them from sticking to each other. The chamber was pitch black like the others before it, the only source of light being the lantern Kristoff had brought.

 

"Watch your step," he breathed, pointing the lantern towards the floor. All around the room there were metal grates for drainage; in ice storage, any melted water meant disaster.

 

Kristoff whistled and lifted the lantern back. It lighted only a short radius around the two of them, and so the room seemed endless in the darkness; the faint reflections of light on the ice blocks looked like dancing ghosts. The eerie feeling was intensified by the distant murmur of a childish, almost inhuman voice that Anna had been hearing since Kristoff closed the last door behind them.

 

"—sure Sven will love you, Sir Jorgenbjorgen. You two are not the best conversationalists, but he's very easy to please. Especially if any of your body parts are made of carrots."

 

Kristoff whistled again, more forcefully this time.

 

"Oh, hey, you're back! That was fast." The voice started to approach them. Anna braced herself, rubbing her poorly-clad arms and struggling to see what was moving in the dark. "I was telling Sir Jorgenbjorgen that maybe we could go topside so we could introduce him to Sven? We'll be very stealthy, I swear."

 

A stout, roundish shape — the owner of the voice — appeared in the shadows, just outside the circle of light.

 

"I know we have a secret to keep, but it gets boring sitting here all day. And Sir Jorgenbjorgen may be a great listener, but he's terrible at keeping the conversation rolling. Frankly, I don't know how Elsa managed to do this for 13 years. Oh, wait! Is that... Anna?"

 

The owner of the voice was a 3-foot tall snowman, with twigs for arms, a carrot nose and a mouth that was talking to her.

 

Anna's shriek was quickly silenced by Kristoff's free hand over her mouth.

 

"No screaming," he whispered into her ear, his broad chest pressed against her back. Her mind went back to her nightgown, then to the letter she had received from the Kingdom of the Southern Isles the day before, delivered by private courier inside a blank sealed envelope so that it could bypass the royal mail's scrutinizing eyes; the one Anna had hidden inside a romance novel under her pillow while she didn't reach a decision on what to do about it.

 

She pushed Kristoff's hand off her face a little more incisively than necessary, eyes trained on the newcomer.

 

"This is starting to feel a lot like the first time we all met," the snowman said.

 

"First time?," Anna whispered to Kristoff in a shrill voice.

 

The man sighed. "She doesn't remember that, Olaf."

 

 _Olaf._  She knew that name. As the little creature came closer, Anna realized she remembered him — from a long time ago.

 

"Oh," he said, raising his eyebrows. "Ooh. So it _is_  like the first time. I mean, for you, at least. Let's do this right, then." He extended a twig hand to her. "Nice to meet you. I'm Olaf, and—"

 

"You like warm hugs," she completed, kneeling on the straw-covered floor to be at eye level with him. "I know you. Elsa made you when we were kids. How..." There were several questions swirling around her now aching head, but the most urgent was, "How are you _alive_?"

 

"Uhhhhh." Olaf turned to Kristoff, putting a hand in front of his mouth and whispering as if this would prevent Anna from listening to anything he said. "Is she still...?"

 

"Yes," Kristoff answered, crouching (too) close to her.

 

"Oh. Okay," the snowman continued to whisper. "And how do I explain to her how I'm alive without telling her about Elsa's powers?"

 

Anna looked at Kristoff. Her ears started to ring. "Powers?"

 

The harvester and the snowman exchanged a glance. "We are not supposed to talk about that," Olaf told her in a low, hesitating voice.

 

"Uh, he means her... powers as the ruling queen," said Kristoff.

 

"Not those," Olaf rolled his eyes. "Don't be silly. I meant her I-S-E powers," he said, spelling the letters. "You know, the fact that she can create I-S-E out of thin air."

 

Kristoff let out an exasperated sigh. "That's not how you spell—" Olaf tried to shush him, but it was too late.

 

" _Ice_ ," Anna whispered to herself, standing up. "Ice powers. My sister has ice powers..." The migraine was back with a vengeance. She pressed her hands against her temples, feeling dizzy.

 

"Anna, hey. Are you ok?" Kristoff stood up and stepped towards her. The lantern dangled on his hand, the circle of light it cast oscillating around them on the floor. Anna stepped back and turned away from him, but her foot caught on a drain, making her lose her balance; she swung her arms in front of her body to protect herself from the imminent fall, pushing her bare palms flat against a slab of ice—

 

 

_Everyone is asleep but them. It's snowing inside the castle's ballroom, and Anna has never had so much fun in her five years of life. "Hi, I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs," Elsa says in a funny voice, moving the arms of the snowman in front of her._

 

_It's a bright summer morning, and it's snowing. The subjects of Arendelle are gathering around them, swarming through the open gates. "We are never closing them again," Elsa promises her with a smile, pulling her by the hand as they glide over the icy courtyard._

 

 _"I never knew what I was capable of," Elsa tells her, opening her arms. Anna looks around. The walls, the floor, the staircase, Elsa's clothes, the giant snowflake-shaped chandelier_ — _everything around them is made of ice. Elsa's ice._

 

_"I said, ENOUGH!," Elsa shouts. A fence of stalagmites bursts out of the ballroom floor, an impenetrable wall rising between the two of them. The ice grows around Anna, enclosing her, suffocating her screams..._

 

 

"—Anna! Anna, hey, stay with me." Kristoff's breath was intimately close to her face. He was kneeling by her side; she was sitting on the floor of the ice house, her legs sprawled before her. One of Kristoff's arms was around her shoulder, holding her up, while his other hand cradled her face. She blinked, but the world remained dark and blurred.

 

"Was it something I said?" It was Olaf. Their voices sounded distorted, as if she were underwater. "She's not dying again, is she?"

 

"Again?," she heard herself whisper feebly, then Kristoff's strong arms were lifting her limp body off the floor. (Hans' letter crossed her mind again, like a second thought.)

 

"All right, Feistypants, it's back to the castle for you. Olaf, bring that lantern. And stop talking, please."

 

Her vision was dimming. Kristoff's hurried heartbeat reverberated through his ribcage against her side, his shoulder warm and firm under her cheek. She was out before they reached the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Olaf may be learning how to spell, but it seems there’s still a long road ahead of him.


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing Anna noticed when she came back to her senses was that she was drenched in sweat.

 

She opened her eyes and stared at the ornate ceiling of the study room. From the light coming through the window, she guessed it was around noon. Looking down her frame, she saw that her feet were bare, elevated on top of a small mound of throw pillows. She was still wearing her winter coat, which explained the heat — only the top two buttons had been opened, as if someone had started to remove it from her unconscious body but changed their mind once they saw the nightgown below it.

 

Also, there was a carrot resting on her belly.

 

"He asked me to keep an eye on you, but I thought that might make you freak out again."

 

She looked towards the voice. There was Olaf, sitting noselessly on an armchair beside her.

 

"Yeah, that," Anna cleaned her throat, "that was good thinking on your part."

 

She sat up and helped placing Olaf's carrot nose back. She rummaged her mind, careful not to trigger another migraine: she had slipped, fallen on an ice block, and in the next minute she was sprawled on the gelid ice house floor. Then Kristoff had brought her here, she deduced, laid her down on the sofa, lighted the fireplace, pulled off her boots, considered taking off her coat and decided not to, and left Olaf to guard her unscheduled nap.

 

Now that she thought about it again, it seemed obvious, almost logical: Elsa could create ice. Anna knew it. She had known it since childhood, in fact — the memory of playing with Elsa in a snow-filled ballroom was real, almost palpable. But after that, things got patchy; there were moments involving Elsa and her and ice that felt happy, and others that felt tense or even frightful. Except for that earliest memory, they were both adults in all of them, so Elsa's 13 years of isolation must have been related to it somehow (to protect her from backlash, perhaps; the word "sorcerer" came to mind). But why hide it from Anna now, if she'd known since they were kids — long before what seemed to be her memory threshold, the coronation ball? And yet... Anna only remembered Elsa's ice magic after seeing Olaf again. The memory block didn't follow a chronological order, then. Could it be related to Elsa and her powers?

 

Her gaze got lost into the flames that crackled on the fireplace of the study. A shiver ran down her spine in spite of the heat. " _Déjà vu_ ," Anna brushed the familiar feeling aside, shaking off the beginning of another headache.

 

"The jar wool?" Olaf looked up at her, confused. "You should probably sleep some more, Anna. You're talking nonsense."

 

Anna smiled. "I'm fine, Olaf. Well, not _fine_  fine, but I'm functional for the moment." She got up, smoothing the front of her coat. "I should dress actual clothes and try to find Kristoff. It's the second time in a month he has to drag a half-dead princess back to safety, the least I can do is thank him for it."

 

"Oh, I can help you with that," said Olaf, walking beside her towards the door. "He must be in Elsa's office. He said he was going to have a word with her." The snowman scratched his chin. "I hope he doesn't get in trouble for bringing you to see me. She'd sounded very serious when she asked me to hide until you got your memories back."

 

Anna stepped out of the study, a feeling of dread building in her stomach. Her change of clothes would have to wait.

 

 

The path to Elsa's office was fortunately deserted; Anna only met one maid along the way, who'd asked her if she was feeling better and made no comments on her choice of wearing outerwear inside. Anna was glad she hadn't asked where she was going — it would have been hard to explain.

 

Alone in Elsa's waiting room, Anna crouched in front of the office door and tried to peek through the keyhole. A blue velvet blur crossed her field of vision; further away, she could see Kristoff's midriff with his hands on his hips.

 

"We can't let her out yet," she heard Elsa say. Giving up on the keyhole, Anna got up and pressed her ear against the door. Her sister was talking in a lower tone now, and she only caught a word here and there: "risk", "rumors", "nightmare". "... Imagine what _he_ might try if he finds out." He?

 

"It's just a day trip," Kristoff said, frustrated. "I'd take her straight to the Valley, no stops. No one would even notice she's gone." _Stop sounding like a creep_ , Anna thought, _I'm genuinely trying to befriend you again._

 

Elsa didn't seem too happy with his idea either. "Right, like she didn't come back unconscious from your last trip to the Valley. Maybe if you drop her on her head at the same point of the road, it will fix her." So that was where she was going when she fell from Sven. But why didn't Elsa want her to know about this "valley" place?

 

"It was an accident!" It was clear from his voice that Kristoff had said those words more times than he thought was necessary. "Please. They have been inside her mind before."

 

" _What?_ ," Anna let out in a whisper, then covered her mouth with her hand and hoped the two inside the office hadn't heard her. What did he mean? Someone, or maybe some _ones_ , had been inside her mind before? Before _when_ , more specifically? And who?

 

"They did, and look how well that turned out." Elsa's voice was lower again. Anna pressed her face harder against the door. "… completely different. She is recovering on her own, in her own time. It's best for her if we keep her here."

 

There was a brief silence, some footsteps. Then Kristoff's voice, closer to the door: "You are afraid, aren't you?," he asked in a defiant tone. "You don't want her getting her memories back."

 

The paneled wood turned colder against Anna's cheek. "I don’t—have you lost _your_ memory?" Elsa was agitated. At least it was easier to hear her now. "She just fainted on you! Are you willing to run the risk?"

 

" _She_ is willing to run the risk," Kristoff shoot right back. "It should be her decision, not ours." _Excellent point_ , thought Anna, adding several points to their friendship meter.

 

There was another pause. Anna looked down; a thin layer of frost was advancing through the gap under the door, almost touching her bare toes.

 

"You just want her to remember you, even if it kills her." In the back of her mind, she could see Elsa staring him down through narrowed eyes, hands closed into fists.

 

"Well, it's very convenient for you that she doesn't remember what you did," Kristoff retorted, his voice every inch as cruel as her sister's.

 

Anna stepped back, rubbing her cheek. The layer of frost was spreading quickly over the surface, coagulating around the doorknob. She heard Kristoff start to mumble something that may have been an apology, but he was cut off by Elsa's order.

 

"Leave me alone." Her voice sent an almost literal chill down Anna’s spine. "And leave her alone, too, for her sake."

 

Then the doorknob rattled with force, ice splinters shaking out of it onto the parquet flooring. Anna barely had time to take three more steps away from the door before Kristoff marched out of the office. He slammed the door shut, making the frost layer fall down, and only then noticed she was there.

 

Locking eyes with her, his anger simmered down a little, but didn't vanish. "Go back to your room," he murmured, dusting off the snowflakes that had gathered on his shoulders like dandruff. "It's _dangerous_  in there," he growled back at the closed door loud enough for Elsa to hear him, then strode out of the waiting room and left Anna alone in the middle of a mental whirlwind.


	6. Chapter 6

_Anna, my beloved,_

 

_Mankind has yet to come up with the vocabulary to describe how I felt when my eyes saw your elegant calligraphy. After all that happened last summer, after your five months of silence, I believed I had lost you forever and would never hear from you again. Your words have brought light to the end of this heavy and bitter Autumn of mine._

 

_It is terribly unfortunate, however, that my joy has to arise out of your pain. From what you describe in your letter, your injuries must have been gruesome, not to mention dangerous. Whatever happened to you_ _—_ _and how odd it is that your sister will not clarify even that!_ _—_ _could have meant your demise, my love! And with that my own, for I doubt my heart would resist the news of your death. I wish I could be by your side to aid in your recovery but, as you will see below, that cannot be._

 

_However it pains me to say so, I have to agree with your sister that the process of recovering your memories should be a gradual and measured affair. If I understood correctly, you suffer headaches whenever you try to think about those awful events that your mind has gently erased. Therefore, it would be unwise of me to try and force the issue by dumping on this first letter a full recollection of all the facts I have witnessed during my short stay in Arendelle in the summer; likewise, I am far from a reliable source of information on the subsequent days after I was compelled to leave your side._

 

_I will, then, limit myself to answering your more pressing questions, while hoping against my best senses for a future opportunity to say more._

 

_1) Yes, I still love you! My feelings for you have not wavered even for one second in the last five months, and I have remained thoroughly faithful to that love. There shall never be another for me but you._

 

_2) I would have gladly stayed by your side in Arendelle during these months, even without the approval of your sister, and I would have fought relentlessly for our right to get married. Yet, for reasons that you mercifully can't recall, I have been forced to leave the kingdom and am now_ persona non grata _in your homeland. In fact, I have been banned from ever entering your country again._

 

_This is a very shameful subject to me, and I would rather not have to discuss it again. I will admit I was not entirely innocent, but my transgressions were greatly exaggerated in my sentence. What I actually did would never deserve a punishment as harsh as the one your sister chose to apply. Nonetheless, that was her choice, and she is Queen; you, my love, are her subject, and I was but a foreigner in her land. Our duty is to obey._

 

_But don't take my vague words as reason for your heart to grow cold against Elsa, dear. It may sound unlikely, I know, but even if she has stood in the way of our relationship, I am convinced she did that out of sisterly love for you. A twisted kind of love, perhaps, one that fails to take your happiness into account on occasion, but love. Put yourself in her shoes for one second: there she was, being crowned ruler of a nation from whose people she had been cut off since childhood; thrown at the front stage of international politics after a whole life of reclusion; and then I, an outsider, appear to take away the attention of her only source of stability. At the time, I could see nothing but the brutal irrationality of her actions (granted, not the most flattering attribute for a Queen!). As you know, my relationship with my own siblings lacks the warmth and affection that you and Elsa seem to share, so it took me a while to realize Elsa was just acting out of fear of losing you. She only wanted to protect you, even at the cost of your freedom to make your own life choices. Do not be hard on her for this._

 

_3) It is with a heavy heart that I must refuse your invitation for dinner. Like I said before, I am no longer welcome in Arendelle. There must be a registry of royal decrees somewhere in Elsa's office, if you feel the need to see the ban with your own beautiful eyes. It is a shame_ _—_ _not only for what it means to the two of us, but also because the relations between our countries have not been the same since July. Perhaps you, with your endless patience and even greater kindness, could make her see the light and lift the ban? My parents and I would be eager to pay a visit and talk business, if this, and not the renewal of our engagement, is what touches her heart._

 

_This is all I can reveal to you for now, I'm afraid. Hopefully our future correspondence will carry more joyful news. (Suppressing my name from the envelope was a very smart move, by the way. I suspect your sister would not want us to stay in contact. But I insist that you should not hate her for it! This is but a test our love must overcome.)_

 

_Forever in your memories,_

 

_Your True Love_


	7. Chapter 7

Anna stayed in her bedroom for the rest of the day, drifting in and out of a restless slumber. In her waking moments, she would try hard to recover glimpses of memory, then she would pass out from the effort, and her dreams would wake her up again. Confusing dreams, filled with snow and dread and anger. The fight with Elsa at the coronation ball; confronting her again in the ice palace; Elsa lashing out against her, yelling at her to go away, creating a terrifying monster to chase her out.

Gerda kept vigil throughout the afternoon, insisting for her to eat, to stop struggling with her mind. The few times she left the room, however, Anna picked up the book from under her pillow and reread the letter she had hidden inside it. It was clear Hans disliked Elsa, but what for? Was it only because she refused to bless their engagement? Was there more?

The answer came to her in a flash of memory or a dream — by then it was almost impossible to tell one from the other. They were in a desolate, frozen landscape... she could feel Elsa nearby, Elsa had caused all that ice around them... Anna could see her own hand held up in a plea, white-blue and covered in ice crystals... and through her blurred vision she could see Hans curled up in pain on the icy ground, not far from her...

Elsa had attacked him. Elsa had attacked them both.

Anna's body was freezing in her vision. Her sister had used her ice powers against her. This was why Elsa didn't want her to get her memories back. She didn't want Anna to remember when she attacked her and Hans.

Maybe Elsa had tried to harm Hans and she had jumped in the way to protect him. Maybe her life had been saved by those people from the valley Kristoff had talked about. Maybe that was when they had messed with her mind, to make her forget Hans and all this so she could trust Elsa again. Too many maybes, and only one certainty: Anna would never be able to live in peace again, unless she found out exactly what had happened.

It was late in the evening when Gerda finally fell asleep deep enough for Anna to escape. She navigated the castle corridors and hallways with a lantern on her hand and a clear destination in her mind: the Queen's office.

The place was empty when she got there, an unusual sight. Elsa was a renowned workaholic, much more than their father had been. "Keeps my head out of trouble," she would say whenever Kai insisted for her to go outside and see the sun. There were vestiges of her scattered around the room: the unlit fireplace, the ice crystals that remained over the furniture after her argument with Kristoff, a half-drunk cup of tea next to her blue gloves on her desk.

Anna placed her lantern on the desk. Under the yellow light, a large leather-bound tome caught her eyes: the text in gold letter on the cover read "Royal Acts and Orders of the Kingdom of Arendelle — A.D. 1839".

It was easier to open than she expected. That had been a slow year for royal decrees, it seemed — the first half of the book revolved almost exclusively around Elsa's ascent to the throne and all the bureaucracy of it. She leafed through letters transferring the powers from the Council of Dukes to the new Queen, then the coronation documents proper, and finally landed on what she wanted to find. There it was, Elsa's very first royal decree: an order to ban Hans Westergaard, Prince of the Kingdom of the Southern Isles, from ever entering again the Kingdom of Arendelle under penalty of prison and immediate deportation. Charges: high treason, attempted regicide, plotting against the crown, criminal negligence. If these were true, Hans had come off too easy. By law he should have been hanged, and dead men didn't write letters.

The sound of footsteps amidst the silence alerted her to someone approaching the room. She closed the book quickly and picked up one of Elsa's gloves just as her owner opened the door.

Anna feigned interest on the glove and didn't look up as Elsa approached. "I had promised myself I would never wear them again," Elsa said softly as she stepped into the light of the lantern. "But they were a more familiar sight to you than my hands, so..."

Anna laid the glove against her palm, thumb to thumb. "The sacrifices we make for those we love," she whispered, smoothing the blue satin between her hands. She held her eyes down for another moment before staring defiantly into Elsa's. "Tell me."

Elsa's gentle smile turned down into a grimace, but she gave a short nod. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

"We would be here all winter."

Anna lifted an eyebrow, ignoring her attempt to make light of the situation. "Then tell me about the thing you don't want me to know."

Elsa stepped away from the light. She turned her eyes down to the floor and turned away from Anna, wringing her hands. 

"I hurt you." The confession came out of her as if it had been ripped out of her entrails with a hook. "It was an accident. I never..." She paused, breathed. "I never intended to cause you harm."

_It was intended for Hans_ , Anna filled in silently, the headache starting again. She had to stop guessing. Thinking about the past brought the migraines, and the migraines were her sister's justification for not telling her anything. She had to focus on the present for now. "But you did," she couldn't help adding.

Elsa flinched briefly. "But I did." She looked out the window, her silhouette drawn into the moonlight. "I caused a lot of harm that day."

They both stood there for what felt like an eternity, Elsa's words still floating around the room like a soundless echo.

"Is that all you can tell me?" Anna broke the silence.

Elsa sighed and turned back to her. "It's all I can bear to say."

There was one more option before any desperate measures had to be taken, even though deep down Anna knew the answer to it. She crumpled Elsa's glove into a ball. "Then I'm going to the Valley with Kristoff."

"Anna, don't..."

She cut down Elsa's whimper. "I'd rather hear it from you, but if you can't help me, I'll get my memories back through other means," she said in a very practical manner, avoiding her sister's eyes.

Elsa still tried to reason with her. "You'll remember it all eventually—"

"I'm tired of _eventually_!" Anna finally snapped, throwing the glove on the desk. "I'm tired of... of waiting, of people hiding things from me! I'm tired of being inside this castle!" She waved her arms around, walking back and forth. "I've spent my whole life within these walls. I've had enough of them. And now everyone... now _you_  tell me I've been outside all summer, and you want to keep me locked in here again without so much as a memory of what it's like out there."

Elsa approached the desk like a cornered cat, her face still outside the reach of the lantern light. "Please don't make me forbid you from leaving." She touched the border of the desk and a layer of frost started forming under her fingers.

Anna ignored it, her blood boiling inside her veins. "You can't stop me," she said, standing opposite Elsa with the desk between them. "You're not my mother."

"But I'm your Queen," she announced in the tone of a royal decree. As she spoke, a gush of cold wind crossed the room, blowing out the lantern and startling them both.

Elsa stepped back, holding her hands to her chest, and turned her back to Anna. "When Kristoff brought you here lifeless in his arms, I'd thought..." Her voice got caught up in her throat. She walked towards the window again. "I can't. I know you'll hate me for this, but I can't risk losing you again."

_Just like Hans had said._ "Is that your final word?"

"It is," Elsa answered, refusing to look at her.

That left Anna no other choice, but at least she could say she had tried. She ran a hand on the cover of the registry book and felt the bas-relief of the lettering under her fingertips. She walked with some difficulty in the dark, searching for the backrest of the sofa and the armchairs. When she got to the entrance, Anna turned back, but Elsa was still looking out the window.

"You may have come out of your room, but I'm still looking at a closed door," Anna whispered to her with a shake of her head, and left.


	8. Chapter 8

It was back to the old days, in a way.

 

After their exchange in her office, Elsa had grown distant. She hadn't physically locked herself in her bedroom again (it would have been incompatible with her royal duties, after all), but she was never completely _there_ whenever she and Anna were in the same room. She kept to formalities during meals: good morning, how was your night?, do you like the new piano teacher?, and so on and so forth. Her eyes averted Anna's, her smiles were rare. No hugs, no kisses, no laughs; nothing was left of the sisterly warmth Anna had rediscovered over that month.

 

It hurt more than if Elsa would have avoided her completely. If she had just hid in her room again, Anna wouldn't have had to look at her face, and she really didn't feel like looking at Elsa's face after what she had done. Not what Elsa had done; what _she_ , Anna, had done.

 

Well, _she_  wouldn't have done what she did if Elsa hadn't done what she did, so it was stupid to feel guilty over it. Elsa had been the one to hurt her, right? Her and Hans. And Elsa was the one refusing to tell her the truth about it. So she deserved it. Maybe, after everything was settled and Anna remembered exactly what had happened and how, she and her sister would be able to share that bond again. But until then it was mutual cold treatment, with just a tiny bit of hope.

 

That tiny bit of hope was crushed when the messenger knocked on Elsa's door and announced their visitors.

 

By a trick of destiny, Anna was in Elsa's office when it happened. Elsa had called her there to discuss details of the Christmas feast (which, considering the current state of their relationship, sounded extremely exciting... not). Anna had been about to doze off while Elsa rattled out the dinner menu, when they heard the knocks at the door.

 

"Must be the Westergaards," Elsa grumbled. They had requested that meeting, she explained yet again, and she wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but politics were politics and the Southern Isles had sounded very keen on rekindling their financial partnership, so she couldn't have said no to them.

 

Anna knew all of this, of course, and not only because Elsa had already told her three times that week. She'd known about this meeting long before her sister knew. And, unlike Elsa, she was not at all surprised when the messenger informed them that their guests for dinner that evening would be King Janus of the Southern Isles, his consort Queen Benedikte, and Prince Hans.

 

"What is _he_  doing here?" Elsa questioned the messenger, whose legs seemed about to give way under her glare. "That man was never supposed to set foot past our port. Why have the guards let him in? What happened to his ban?"

 

"I lifted the ban," Anna said, standing up from the sofa. Her own legs felt weak as well, but she couldn't let that poor man be the target of her sister's rage.

 

"Nonsense," replied Elsa, turning to her. The messenger was looking at the door from the corner of his eye. "You don't have the authority to do that. The royal guard would have to see a document signed by me to..."

 

Anna could hear the gears turning inside Elsa's brain as her eyes got increasingly wider.

 

Elsa took the notice from the messenger's hand, shooed him away and shut the door. She was standing in front of Anna in three strides. For a moment Anna feared she might be turned into a human popsicle, but Elsa took three deep breaths before talking — and even then her words still sounded like ice shards. "What have you done?"

 

Anna squared her shoulders. "You would have said no—"

 

"For good reason!"

 

"I want to hear what he has to say!"

 

"You'll hear a whole lot of lies," Elsa growled.

 

"Like the ones you've been telling me?"

 

This made Elsa take a step back. If she wanted to have a screaming contest, two could play that game, Anna thought. But then, instead of shouting something at her, Elsa turned away and started pacing back and forth in the middle of the office, fidgeting with her braid and mumbling "conceal, don't feel" to herself as the room turned colder and colder.

 

Anna hid her hands under her armpits, shivering. There were snowflakes falling from the ceiling. "Elsa..."

 

"I know!," Elsa cried helplessly. She stopped with her hands on her hips and took a few more breaths to ground herself. The snow stopped and the temperature rose a bit. "Kristoff was right," Elsa was mumbling to herself again, shaking her head. "I should have listened to him. If we'd taken you to the trolls right away I wouldn't have to be polite to this _asshole_ now."

 

Anna had never heard her sister swearing. She wondered if that was one of the memories she'd lost. (Also: trolls?)

 

There was another knock at the door. It was Gerda, to inform them that their guests were waiting in the great hall. The governess didn't seem pleased, but she made no further comments.

 

Anna could feel Elsa fuming by her side as they walked in silence down the corridor. "Sorry," she whispered, consumed by guilt but also angry at herself for it.

 

"'Sorry' won't cut it," Elsa snarled.

 

Anna looked out the window. The night sky was clad in thick gray clouds. Downstairs in the castle's yard, Kristoff was filling his sleigh with bags and crates as he talked to Olaf. From the amount of luggage he was loading into the sleigh, she could tell he intended to be gone for a while. She lifted up a hand, hoping to at least get to wave at him before his departure, but the corridor ended and he never looked up.

 

She felt the ropes of guilt tightening a little further around her heart. "Just tell everyone it was me and kick them back into their boat."

 

Elsa spared a glance at Gerda's back and the guards walking right behind them. They probably should not discuss this with other people around, even in whispers. "I'd love to do just that, but I might as well declare war against them and send you to jail for forgery." Anna felt tempted to answer with a snarky remark, but chose to keep her mouth shut. She had to be able to keep Hans nearby at least for as long as it took to retrieve her memories. After that... Well. Depending on how bad it went, she figured she could always run away with the Westergaards. "We'll say I allowed this visit at your request, as a gesture of good will towards the Kingdom of the Southern Isles."

 

"You're a terrible liar," Anna mumbled, rolling her eyes.

 

"Well, think of a better plan next time you decide to commit a crime," her sister hissed, then turned into full regal mode as the guards opened the doors to the great hall.

 

The first thing Anna saw was Hans.

 

He looked just as dashing as she remembered him, even as small differences registered in her mind: his wavy auburn hair was slightly longer, his skin slightly darker, a slight air of tiredness clouding his eyes. He stood up from his seat as soon as the sisters entered the room, his gaze locked with Anna's, and her heart rushed like a stampede.

 

"Princess Anna..." he started towards her, but stopped in his tracks when King Janus cleaned his throat. Hans turned to look at his father, who jerked his head towards Elsa and whispered "Manners, boy" menacingly.

 

Hans cleaned his throat and bowed before Elsa with a flourish. "Your Majesty." To an outsider, he was the picture of aristocratic politeness, but Anna knew from his letter and from Elsa's reaction to his visit that social expectations were the only thing preventing them from coming to blows in the middle of the great hall. "I didn't expect us to meet again so soon. Quite generous of you to review your opinions on our issues." He winked at Anna, very much aware that Elsa hadn't reviewed her opinions at all.

 

"The sacrifices we make for those we love," said Elsa with a glance towards Anna, holding her diplomatic smile in place.

 

"I'm afraid the ladies have yet to meet my parents?" Hans proceeded with formally introducing the King and Queen. At each word and gesture of his, Anna felt her heart growing against the restraints of guilt: this had been the right thing to do. Hans was her fairy tale prince, the perfect man for her in every measure. She loved him, and he loved her; he had said so in his letter (which she had preventively burned to avoid leaving evidence around. She knew it by heart, anyway). Elsa had no choice but to accept their love, and if she couldn't do so, Anna would have no choice but to leave her sister behind.

 

"My beloved." Hans' whisper broke her out of her thoughts. She had his full attention now; Elsa was talking to the royal couple, her back turned to her and the prince. "I can't believe I'm looking into your eyes again," he said sheepishly, his high cheeks pink from the cold outside. "How do you feel?"

 

"Better now," she answered, blood rushing to her face.

 

He looked behind him quickly, making sure the others were not listening. "Have you remembered any...?"

 

Anna sighed. "Bits and pieces." She had remembered quite a lot since she wrote that letter to him, but it didn't make much of a difference. Besides, she wanted to hear his version of the facts, to see how much of it all matched. "Elsa hasn't been any help."

 

"Don't worry," he told her, holding her hands in his. "I will tell you everything you wish to know."

 

They hadn't seen each other in five months, and he knew exactly what she needed to hear. If only she had been able to meet him sooner!

 

"Dinner is served," Gerda announced at the door. Elsa marched ahead, alongside the King and Queen of the Southern Isles. Anna took Hans' arm and smiled up at him. Now that he was here, everything would finally fall into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anachronism alert: popsicles were invented in the 20th century, but I don't care and neither should you.


	9. Chapter 9

There was a buzz of uneasiness among the servants as they added a place at the table. It was not openly evident — from the cooks to the waiters, all of them behaved in an impeccable manner, in line with Elsa's goal to impress her guests with a lavish dinner while acting as if this was how everyday meals went in Arendelle. Yet Anna could sense their tension in the air. She ignored the red flags her instincts were waving at her and chalked it off as concern for having to feed an unexpected fifth mouth.

 

As the hostess, Elsa sat at the end of the table, with King Janus to her right and Queen Benedikte next to him. In a formal arrangement, Prince Hans would have sat to Elsa's left, being the other male guest in attendance; but nobody thought wise to leave the Queen and the Prince so close to each other, particularly having forks, knives and glassware within reach. So Anna remained seated next to her sister, acting as a buffer between her and Hans and facing the royal couple.

 

Queen Benedikte was in her late fifties, but looked older. Her gray hair was braided tightly around her head, her narrow eyes and thin lips were marred by small wrinkles, and she had the demeanor of a woman who had birthed thirteen boys and would have gladly stopped around the sixth. She spoke in short, brisk sentences and seemed to have disliked Anna on sight. King Janus, on the other hand, had taken a liking to the Princess: while he was stern with Hans and very formal with Elsa and his wife, he always had a gentle smile on his face when his words were directed at Anna. It was a stark contrast with the description Hans had made of his father back at the coronation ball — he didn't look like the strict military type Hans had portrayed, but a gentle, forgiving grandpa (a fitting image, since he was closer in age to Anna and Elsa's grandparents than to their parents).

 

"But tell us, King Janus," Elsa started the conversation anew, unfolding her napkin on her lap. "The house of Westergaard has been blessed with many good news the last few months, hasn't it?"

 

"Yes, five of them, to be exact." King Janus was beaming. Anna felt tempted to ask (after all, she wasn't aware of anything that had happened in her own kingdom over the last few months, much less neighboring ones), but the man continued on his own. "I was already growing impatient, you know. Over half of my boys have settled and nothing — Peter's wife had two false alarms, the poor thing." He sobered for a brief moment, then smiled again. "I was already giving up on seeing my grandchildren born before I died, but it seems my daughters-in-law were all saving the harvest for this year."

 

Oh. Well, that explained the grandfatherly vibe, Anna thought.

 

"My father is fascinated with having grandchildren," added Hans. Neither he nor his mother seemed to share King Janus' enthusiasm with the topic. "My childhood would have been more enjoyable if he had doted on his sons as much as he dotes on them."

 

"Why, Prince Hans," Elsa turned to him with a venomous smile. "It almost sounds like you don't like your nephews."

 

"Babies are fussy and loud," he explained. "Of course, I'm sure my opinion of them will change once I hold  _my_  child in my arms." He looked fondly at Anna, touching her hand. Her heart raced, but somehow it felt different from before. The bad kind of different.

 

Queen Benedikte huffed, refusing to look at them. " _Your_  child," she muttered under her breath. Anna noticed the King poking his wife under the table, whispering "not now, Benni".

 

"I was wondering, King Janus," Elsa continued as the waiter started serving the oysters. They never had oysters for dinner, even when serving  _à la russe_ ; these had been imported in a rush especially for the occasion. "Now that your older sons have children, where does it put Hans in the line of succession? Seventeenth?"

 

"Eighteenth," Hans answered, trying to act like it didn't affect him (and failing miserably).

 

Anna felt a very unpleasant shiver run up her spine. She looked out the large windows behind the King and Queen; heavy snow kept falling, covering the outside world in white. A sudden, undefined wave of worry took hold of her heart.

 

King Janus went on, breaking the awkward silence. "But you must have in mind that being a grandfather is very different from being a father. It is one thing to hold the reins of thirteen boys and turn them — most of them — into fine men, all the while ruling a kingdom as wealthy and complex as ours." He removed his gloves and picked an oyster from the tray. "Now, grandkids — and three of them are girls, something I've always wanted... no such responsibility. I don't have to worry about politics with the little ones, that's their parents' role. To them I'm just Grandpa Janus."

 

He smiled at Anna specifically. She smiled back, because it's what you do.

 

Queen Benedikte refused the oysters. "You are so obsessed with grandchildren, you'll take in even the ones that aren't yours," she muttered a little louder this time, stealing a glance at Anna.

 

"Benedikte, enough," King Janus hissed.

 

Anna's instinct flared back with full force, as did her headache.

 

The oysters reached Hans, who pulled at the tips of his fingers to remove his gloves. "Let us change the subject, shall we? Queen Elsa, why don't you tell my father about the ice exports? I hear they promise to be spectacular this winter," he said matter-of-factly.

 

_As thirteenth in line in my own kingdom, I didn't stand a chance._

 

Anna didn't know where the thought had come from. Somewhere far away, she could hear Elsa speaking, but she couldn't concentrate on her words; she kept looking at Hans' gloves, at his hands.

 

_She doomed herself, and you were dumb enough to go after her._

 

"Your Highness?" Anna shook her head, dismissing the waiter with a wave of her hand. Elsa and King Janus were still talking about ice exports, but Queen Benedikte and Hans were looking at her.

 

"Sweetheart? Are you alright?" Hans tried to hold her hand, but she pulled it away.

 

"I'm a bit dizzy," she whispered.

 

"Is she unwell?" The Queen quipped. "I was terribly ill on most of my pregnancies. Such a hassle."

 

_I, on the other hand, am the hero who is going to save Arendelle from destruction._

 

The memories were flooding her mind. She had felt so cold... and Hans was there... he was supposed to save her, to make her feel warm again, but...

 

_Hans, no, stop. Please..._

 

She remembered him removing his glove to put out a candle in the study room. After that, he put out the fireplace and locked the door behind him. She had asked him to kiss her, but he’d refused to. He'd never loved her; he loved power. He wanted a throne, and there were only two obstacles on his way to the throne of Arendelle. Hans had wanted Elsa dead. Hans had left Anna to die.

 

_If only there was someone out there who loved you._

 

The wine glasses clinked when Anna stood up abruptly, pushing back her chair. All eyes turned to her.

 

"Princess Anna?"

 

"Excuse me," she breathed, wobbling away from the table. Elsa stared at her, alarmed; she knew what was happening. "I’m sorry," Anna whispered, dashing out of there as fast as her dizziness would allow. Behind her, she could hear Hans standing up and Elsa yelling at him, "You're not going anywhere near her. Guards!"

 

Anna walked aimlessly through the corridors, letting her weak legs take the lead. The world was spinning around her, and her vision was doubled. Voices called her name — servants, guards — but she averted their hands and pushed them away. She steeled herself, opening the doors to the castle yard. There was a place she had to go to...

 

The freezing wind hit her with a new wave of memories.

 

_The ice blast hits her chest with such force it pushes her a few steps back. There is a sharp pain inside her, in her heart. She looks up at her sister, disheveled and trembling; Elsa's back is turned to her. Only when she turns around does she realize what she has done…_

 

Her feet sunk into the blanket of snow up to the middle of her calves, her slippers and socks soaking up the gelid humidity. She pushed through.

 

_She is five years old. "Higher!," she screams, jumping up and up and up at each mountain of snow Elsa creates for her, but then Elsa slips and something hits her head..._

 

_"You can just unfreeze it," Anna says like it is so simple, but all around the two of them there are cracks running up the walls of Elsa's ice palace. "I can't," Elsa answers in panic, "I don't know how!"_

 

The wind whipped at her face, snowflakes gathering on her eyelids; she could barely see in the dark, but her body knew where it was taking her. Anna ran a hand over her face and hugged herself against the snowstorm.

 

He couldn't have left the castle in the middle of a storm. He had to be there...

 

_She is alone at night in an unknown barn in an unknown place, and she has to ask a favor out of an unknown, unfriendly man. "I want you to take me up the North Mountain," she tells him in her most authoritative tone, but her knees are shaking. She holds her supplies closer to her body…_

 

Despite her uncooperative arms and legs, Anna managed to push open the heavy sliding door of the stables. The warmer air inside felt like a healing balm against her skin, but her evening dress was still drenched. "Kristoff!," she tried to scream; her voice came out like a weak whimper. Light flickered in the far back of the building.

 

"Anna?," Kristoff’s voice called back, then his tall figure emerged out of the last stall.

 

Her feet carried her drunkenly towards him. "Kristoff," she breathed out, throwing herself into his waiting arms.

 

"Anna, what... Anna, you're freezing!" He hung the lantern on a wall with difficulty, one arm around her waist. Her legs were giving way under her; she clung to his sweater, now damp with snow. "Did you walk all the way here in these clothes? In this weather?"

 

She was shivering uncontrollably and her head hurt so much she could smell colors. "Kristoff, please," she sobbed, cold tears burning down her cheeks. There were voices shouting for her outside. "Kiss me."

 

She didn't have to ask him twice. His lips crashed against hers, a hand clutching at her soaked hair in desperation.

 

_She is in a hollow on the ground, in a strange but familiar place. Kristoff is there, holding her against his chest; she feels very weak and cold. There are rocks... no, creatures, all around the hollow, looking at her with concern. "Only true love can thaw a frozen heart," says the eldest of them..._

 

_They are at the castle gates, Kristoff and her. She's in his arms, and she tries snuggling against him, but his warmth is no match for the cold that rises from inside her. "Are you gonna be ok?," she asks, teeth chattering. "Don't worry about me," he answers with a reassuring smile on his lips..._

 

 

_The fjord is frozen._

 

_Amidst the deafening silence, Anna can hear the puffs of her feeble breaths. Her stiff joints refuse to work. She looks down at her hands; they are a sickening shade of blueish purple, covered in ice crystals._

 

_She is dying._

 

_"Anna!"_

 

_Far in the distance, she sees Kristoff running towards her. She tries to scream his name, unsure if he can hear her. Maybe she can still be saved... maybe this small, early spark of love between them will be enough. If she just stands still, if she just saves her last strength and waits for him..._

 

_A metallic sound vibrates through the air._

 

_She turns to her left and sees her sister prostrated on the ice. Elsa... Her only family, her sister, who once had been her best friend... Defeated, hopeless, helpless... Alone._

 

_Hans is marching towards her. He is wielding his sword._

 

_Anna can't wait anymore._

 

_She spares one final mournful glance at Kristoff before making the last decision of her life._


	10. Chapter 10

When Anna woke up, she was once again in her bed, but this time nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The Venetian mask on a wall had been a gift from an Italian envoy back in September; she had purchased the dark blue shawl with embroidered white flowers herself, at a crafts fair in October. Her furniture had been in its current position since August, when she'd gotten bored with her room and decided to turn everything around. And of course, she'd met the man that was sitting in the _récamier_  on the night after Elsa's coronation in July, and he'd been following her around since then.

 

Anna attempted to clean her throat, even though it felt like she had swallowed all the sand in the Sahara. At least she managed to produce enough sound to catch Kristoff's attention: his shoulders flinched and he whipped his head up from the romance novel on his lap. ( _Thank God I burned that letter_ , she thought.)

 

"Hey, stranger." The husky voice was an unintended sexy bonus from her dry airways.

 

"I hope that 'stranger' is a joke," Kristoff answered with a lopsided smile.

 

Anna cocked an eyebrow. "No hot-blooded girl would ever forget such a hunk," she winked.

 

Kristoff dropped the book on the _récamier_  and came to sit facing her on the bed, then ran a hand along her jaw and laid a soft kiss on her lips. "Water?" This time he'd left the jar on her bedside table. He filled the cup to the brim and brought it to Anna's mouth.

 

She drank a second cup before talking again, this time in her normal voice. "Please tell me it's still December 15th."

 

Kristoff snickered. "Sorry, it's December 16th."

 

"Good enough."

 

"I didn't say of what year."

 

Anna punched his bicep as he laughed and pulled her against him for a deeper kiss. It dawned on her that they had gone a whole month without bantering with each other. Now that her memories of it were back, she wondered how she'd survived that far. (Miserably, her heart suggested.)

 

Now this was what true love actually looked like. Kristoff and her didn't see eye to eye on everything — they had their arguments, and there were things one of them loved and the other couldn't care less about, and sometimes he'd just get on her nerves, like when he insisted on taking the _second_  bite of the carrots he shared with Sven ("Really? Are you kissing me with that mouth?"). But they accepted each other's quirks, sought the middle ground, reached compromises, and occasionally agreed to disagree. Being in a relationship required mutual effort to make it work, but Kristoff made it worthwhile — and he seemed over the moon with happiness now that she remembered him again, so Anna guessed she must have been doing something right as well.

 

She sighed against his lips when he broke the kiss. "If you're wearing your Sunday best, I guess our guests are still around," she muttered, running her hands on the front of his blue vest. She remembered how he'd protested when he was first sent in to be measured, and then how quiet he'd fallen when he'd looked at himself in the mirror wearing his first tailor-made suit. ("Guess I clean up well," he'd conceded.)

 

Kristoff shrugged. "Maybe I just wanted to look nice for when my favorite girl woke up?"

 

"I'd have thought you looked nice in a potato sack," Anna giggled, and it wasn't a lie: considering a large potato sack would have barely reached the top of his thighs, he'd have definitely looked very nice in it.

 

"They leave this afternoon, if the weather is good," he explained. "Do you want to know what your ex was planning this time?"

 

She took a deep breath. "I think I have an idea, but bring it on."

 

He clicked his tongue. "He told his parents you were in a _delicate health situation_."

 

"Pregnant," she translated.

 

"Yup. From me, I suppose. And that Elsa had lifted his ban because she wanted him to save your honor, or whatever. And he would marry you and raise the child as his own, of course, because he loves you so much."

 

"How noble of him," Anna said in an affected tone.

 

"But then you freaked everyone out at dinner, and the cat was out of the bag. Elsa told them the whole story—"

 

"Oh, _now_ she tells the whole story."

 

"Yeah, anyway," Kristoff rolled his eyes. "She's smoothing things over with them as we speak, I think. On the bright side, she's also setting their facts straight on what happened last summer. So now the two kingdoms are talking business again, and it's back to cleaning horse manure for Prince Hans."

 

Well, at least one small victory had been snatched from the jaws of amnesiac Anna's extremely poor judgment. It probably didn't excuse the fact that she had falsified official royal documentation to allow an enemy of the crown into the kingdom, but hey. It was a start.

 

"Is Elsa still mad at me?" She had initially worded the question as "Is Elsa still thinking of sending me to jail?," but she wasn't sure if Kristoff already knew about the ban thing, so it was better to play safe.

 

"I think she's just mad at herself, actually," he chuckled. "She was here a minute ago."

 

Well. That was nice to hear. Elsa had a handful of reasons to be mad at herself. "She said you were right, you know," Anna whispered in a conspiratorial tone. "About taking me to see the trolls."

 

"I know. She apologized." Kristoff nodded slowly, a sly smile curling a corner of his lips. "She also wanted me to tell you she's sorry for not helping with your memories. Says she should have faced the problem head-on, instead of sitting around and trying to delay the inevitable." He lifted his eyebrows, looking very smug. "It was hard not to say 'I told you so'."

 

They enjoyed a few moments of silent bliss, just kissing and exchanging caresses. He pushed her bangs aside. There was only a faint mark of her injury creeping from under her hairline. "No more headaches?"

 

"No more headaches," she answered cheerfully. "I can remember everything now in detail. Except..."

 

Kristoff looked at her full of worry. "What is it?"

 

"We were going to see the trolls, right? When I had the accident. Which, by the way, serves me right for being a little shit," she conceded.

 

"Almost dying is too harsh a punishment for being a little shit," he frowned.

 

"I'm still alive. Anyway..." She combed through her memories. It was easy to do, now. They had gone out on a sunny day; Kristoff had made Sven stop by a meadow and dismounted. She'd told him between laughs that he "should have gone before they left the castle, where there were proper toilets," then spurred Sven into a trot. He'd called for her to come back, she'd shouted something on the lines of "come and get me"... and then a few meters ahead something had spooked Sven and he'd bucked. After that, her only memory was the cliff slope right in front of her nose. "I remember we stopped halfway there because there was something you wanted to do. Something you wanted to tell me."

 

"Yep."

 

"I can't remember what you said. It's the only memory that's missing."

 

"You can't remember what I said because I never said it," he explained, smiling. "You took off with Sven before I had a chance." Well, that was a relief. The idea of still having pieces of her life that she didn't know about had almost made her feel sick again.

 

She waited for him to go on, but he just looked at her and bit his lower lip. "And... what was it?"

 

Kristoff took a deep breath and pulled her hands to his lips, kissing one then the other. "Well..." He let go of her hands and rummaged the left pocket of his vest. She'd noticed earlier that there was something in there. She could see he was trying and failing to keep a straight face. "I was hoping for a more romantic setting, but..."

 

Her heart broke into a gallop. "Oh, my God."

 

He was grinning from ear to ear as he fished the ring out of his pocket.

 

Anna giggled, covering her wide smile with her hands. The ring was a gold band with two delicate diamonds flanking a larger emerald. It looked vaguely familiar. "Is it...?"

 

"I was going to buy you a new one, but Elsa suggested giving you your mother's ring. I thought you might like it." He looked like a young boy, staring at her with his big brown eyes filled with nervousness. "Uh, do you like it?"

 

"I _love_ it!" Anna threw her arms around his neck and covered his face with kisses, her eyes welling with tears. She felt the hand that held the ring close tightly around it between their chests, and his other arm encircling her waist. "You are supposed to pop the question now, silly," she laughed, touching his forehead with hers.

 

"I know, I know." Kristoff laughed as well, pulling away and kissing her left hand again. His glistening eyes locked on hers and he took a deep breath. "Anna, will you marry me?"

 

"Yes, a thousand times, yes," she was crying openly as he slid the ring on her finger. She embraced him again, sitting on his knees and kissing him deeply. The kiss went on for a while, slowing down each time they stopped to catch their breaths.

 

They were engaged. Anna knew she wouldn't regret it this time around.

 

She rubbed the tip of her nose against his. Her cheeks hurt from smiling so hard. "If I ever lose my memory again, ask me again and I'll marry you again."

 

Kristoff reflected on it for a second. "I think I'm just going to hope you _don't_  forget your husband." They shared a laugh and kissed once more. That was something they wouldn't have to worry about, Anna thought. If there was one moment forever engraved in her memory, it was this.

**Author's Note:**

> I still can't believe I finished this story before 2017 was over! I feel like I haven't finished a fic in ages, much less a multi-chaptered one.
> 
> I had a blast writing from Anna's POV. Hope you guys have enjoyed the ride!


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